Slogthrop Imponderables and Incommensurables: 1/11/24

Thursday, January 11, 2024

In bed at 9 and up at 3:30 and 4:30, sleeping poorly. 31°, flurries, high of 32°, slippery roads this morning, winter storm watch for tomorrow. Wind SW at 6 mph, 2-12/20. 1.5 inches of snow in the last 6 hours. Tomorrow's snowfall is expected to be 11 inches. Sunrise at 7:22, sunset at 4:37,9+14.

Treadmill; pain. Woke with back, left shoulder, and right wrist pain and had quite a bit of plumbing discomfort & modest pain during the long trip to and visit at the VA. 00:00 & 0.00

I'm grateful today that we have a fireplace, actually 2 fireplaces, though we never use the one in the living room. If I go out tonight or tomorrow morning, I should pick up more logs for the long week ahead.

VA Eye Clinic. I had what I thought was an 11 a.m. appointment that turned out to be a 12:30 appointment. The opthalmologist who conducted the exam ordered a bunch of pre-exam tests and photos of the optic nerve, macula, retina, and whatever. The doctor advised me that I am "glaucoma suspect", which is what Tom Alpren told me maybe 10 years ago. I am sensitive to this diagnosis since Kitty had this disease and it destroyed a good part of her field of vision and resulted in her selling her car and giving up driving. My pressure numbers have always been good, i.e., under 20, and today they were 14 in the right eye and 11 in the left. The next exam is in 6 months.

As usual, while I was there there was a repeated PA announcement: "Your attention, please. Medical emergency. Rapid response team needed in Physical Therapy, Room B . . ."

Also, while I was in the waiting room, another young vet was sitting behind me with a playlist playing on a speaker, not in 'earbuds' or headphones. It was annoying but no one asked him to turn it off. He got up to use the restroom, came back, and sat in front of me where I saw that his right leg had been amputated below the knee and that he wore a prosthesis. He appeared to be the youngest person in the clinic. I wondered where and how he lost his leg, as did, I'm sure, most of the other vets in the large waiting room. In any event, no one was inclined to ask him to turn off his music.

LTMW and seeing no birds at the bird feeders for the 3rd straight day. I filled the sunflower/safflower tube 3 (or 4?) days ago and it's still about as full as when I filled it. Same situation with the suet baskets. What the heck is going on?

Tomorrow's Winter Storm Warning and the week-long arctic temperatures following it led me to fill up the Volvo's gas tank on the way home from the VA and to stock up on some 'essentials'😀 like nacho-flavored Doritors and chunky salsa, donuts, and cruller bits at Sendik's along with fresh eggs, bread, and milk. As I write this, I'm tempted to drive up to Walmart or Michael's to get a few canvases just in case my Muse visits me in the next 7 days while we're homebound. OTOH, I'm pretty tired. I need to check Lilly's topper supply, too.

With each passing year, I feel more vulnerable to Wisconsin's winter weather and wonder whether we should become snowbirds for 2 or 3 months.

USDOJ will seek the death penalty for Buffalo race murder. The United States wants to act as a cold-blooded killer.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Pool Pope Francis. From this morning's WaPo:

Pope Francis is facing some of the most vociferous objection to papal authority in decades, in language that might have stunned past popes. German Cardinal Gerhard Müller derided the pope’s new guidance allowing priests to bless same-sex couples as “blasphemy.” One Italian priest found himself rapidly excommunicated after he referred to Francis in his New Year’s Eve homily as an “anti-Pope usurper” with a “cadaverous gaze, into nothingness.” Still holding on to his title is Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who recently dubbed the pontiff a servant of Satan and announced a seminary to train priests free from the “deviations of Bergoglio” (Francis’s name before becoming pope).
Some of this resentment is long-simmering. Almost as long as he’s been pope, Francis has been confronted by dissenting church traditionalists. Viganò, for one, has previously called for Francis’s resignation.

The more frequently cited point of comparison is the 1960s, when the majority of a papal commission on artificial contraception advised approving its use. Shortly afterward, Pope Paul VI, wrote “Humanae Vitae,” a high-level papal document reiterating traditional teaching and classifying the use of the birth-control pill and other artificial contraception as a sin. Some bishops conferences and theologians rejected the document, saying Catholics should honor their own consciences.
The 1968 contraception ruling “was the last big time when we had such a strong disagreement with something that came out of the Vatican,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a political scientist and longtime journalist who has written several books about the inner workings of the Catholic Church. “But bishops did not criticize [Pope Paul VI] so publicly, the way that some of them are with Pope Francis.”

Quaere: why is it that what most provokes division among Catholics, lay and clerical, are pelvic issues - matters pertaining to sex and sexuality?